


Ron's Choice

by themadmage



Series: Choices [4]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Voldemort Wins, Betrayal, Choices, Companion Piece, Death Eater Harry Potter, Family, Gen, POV Ron Weasley
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-23
Updated: 2018-08-23
Packaged: 2019-07-01 11:09:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15772911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themadmage/pseuds/themadmage
Summary: A companion piece to Choices; responding to Harry's choices from Ron's point of view. Should be read after Hermione's Choice and Remus' Choice.





	Ron's Choice

Ron  _hurt_ when Harry told them that he'd killed Dumbledore. Seeing his best friend - someone he thought was his best friend? - come down the stairs in a Death Eater's mask was more pain than he'd felt since he thought Ginny was dead in second year. He wondered if their roommates were alive. When the body-bind broke, Ron followed Hermione up the stairs and numbly cast the counter for the other boys while she cried. 

 

The letter from Harry made him angry. He hadn't even been sure he wanted to read it. It was Hermione who was holding onto hope that their friend - ex-friend - was playing some sort of game with Voldemort or something. How could Harry think he would want a free pass in a world where his family walked around with targets on their backs? How could Harry find out that people were counting on him and then immediately abandon them?

 

Ron's anger maintained itself right up until the Ministry fell. The Order was floundering without Harry. It was Harry's fault that the Order was losing the war and they lived in fear. His already crowded home was overflowing with Order members, and Harry tried not to think about the summers that Harry had spent here. He especially tried not to think about the summer that Harry had spent here  _as a Death Eater_. Ron was angry, and he had every right to be.

Ron was so deep in his anger, that he hadn't noticed Hermione's internal struggles. Because of his anger, Ron was shocked when Hermione said she was leaving. He wanted to get angry at her too, but then she mentioned her parents and the anger bled out of him. 

"You want your family safe, and I want mine. But they'll never decide to leave, so I've got to stay to protect them if I can," he told her. She seemed to have expected this answer. 

When Lupin told him to stay on the sidelines, at first he was confused. But Ron's anger had finally cooled off enough for him to recognize that even though he and Harry could never be friends again because of the choice Harry made, that didn't mean the years of friendship they had meant nothing. A last gift from Harry, Lupin had said. A brilliant strategist, Lupin had said. Lupin had also said that he wasn't sure what would come before his own morals, but the look in his eyes when he said it suggested he was getting close to finding out. Ron decided not to push. Lupin was an adult, and sure Ron technically was too but he didn't think of himself on the same level as  _real_ adults, and Ron would allow him his privacy.

 

Ron had always been a great chess player. He'd had relatively few opportunities to apply his chess strategies in real life - especially if one didn't count a certain chess game when he was eleven - but he knew he could. By the next Order meeting, Lupin was gone and Ron had no idea where he could be. But Ron didn't need Lupin. He told the rest of the Order that he wanted to help with planning while they shifted into damage control. He'd skip the last year at Hogwarts - it wouldn't be the kind of school he wanted to graduate from anyway - and do his NEWTs by correspondence while making plans to get people to safety. 

It took some convincing - especially with Bill and his parents - but by the end of the meeting it was agreed that Ron would be the leader of the Order's new mission to organize safe-houses for people targeted under Voldemort's rule. He'd work out supply lines to get food and medicinal potions, organize the movement of people as they went into hiding, and arrange for distractions for the Death Eaters when necessary. Ron knew how to make a sacrifice when it would pay off, and knew what was too important to let go. His mum hugged him tearfully and lamented that he'd had to grow up so quickly, but Ron was secure in the choice he made.


End file.
